Stib · Working Document · Not For Circulation
Stib
V2
Product constitution · operational window · build map
This is the constitution for the next Stib. It holds what has been decided, what is still open, what is being tried, and what has been ruled out — in one place, in one vocabulary, so that a decision made once does not have to be made again by accident.
It is private. It is for Steven and Stib. It is not a pitch, not a launch, and not a product for anyone else: nothing here assumes a second user, and nothing here is written to be convincing.
It is also living. When a decision is made it is written here first and built second. When something is measured, the measurement lives in the records and the logs — never in these pages, which would be wrong within a week of being right.
What this document isA product constitution, an operational window, and a build map. It settles what V2 is, marks what is undecided, and lays out the route from the V1 that is running today to a V2 that has been proven beside it.
Where truth livesProduct and specification truth is here. What V2 is supposed to do, and what has been decided about it, is settled in these chapters. Runtime and operational truth is not here. What the system is doing right now — counts, costs, memory contents, what ran and whether it worked — comes from the canonical databases, logs and APIs. If this book ever tells you the current state of the live system, it is out of date and it is lying.
How a claim is labelledSettled decision means it has been decided; build against it. V1 evidence means it is product context from the running system as described by Steven — not verified against repository code. Proposal means it was written here as a suggestion and nobody has agreed to it. Open question means it is deliberately undecided and must stay that way until someone decides.
The four decision states
- →SETTLED — decided. Build against it.
- →OPEN — genuinely undecided. Chapter 9 collects these.
- →EXPERIMENT — worth trying, not committed to, allowed to fail.
- →REJECTED — decided against, and written down so it does not come back.
Contents
Nine chapters. It ends.
- What V2 is for, who it is for, and how to read it.
- The settled commitments, each with the thing it rules out.
- What V1 proved, and what that does and does not authorise.
- Paired plates: the proven part kept, the habit attached to it dropped.
- The system, domain by domain, every line marked settled, open, experiment or rejected.
- One card per domain: purpose, what is settled, what is open, and where live truth comes from.
- The line between this build and the one after it.
- Inherit, harden, rebuild in parallel, prove side by side, and the conditions for cutover.
- What is genuinely undecided. Write on them; they save in this browser.
How to read it
- →Front to back works. So does opening a chapter from the contents and stopping.
- →Chapters 5 and 6 are the same subject at two magnifications: the domains line by line, then one decision card per domain.
- →A rejected line is a decision, not an omission. It is on the page so the idea arrives answered rather than fresh.
- →Anything open is open on purpose. Chapter 9 is where those live and where you can write on them.
- →Your ticks, your calls, and your notes are stored in this browser only. No account, no server, no analytics.